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Tell Your Representative to Support the New Fair Deal Banking and Housing Stability Act, H.R. 3550

As one of our millions of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your Representative today and urge him or her to support H.R. 3550, the “New Fair Deal Banking and Housing Stability Act of 2013,” and to co-sponsor the bill if he or she has not already done so.

This important bill would greatly reform many of the federal agencies and policies that were the main drivers of the 2008 financial crisis. A multitude of federal lending regulations and subsidies incentivized – and in some cases simply forced – banks to give out loans and mortgages to people who should never have qualified for them, implicitly backed by taxpayers. The resulting misallocation of capital directly led to the housing bubble that burst in 2008, harming millions of Americans, and sending the U.S. economy into a funk from which it has yet to recover.

With the federal government once again descending into practices that encourage bad lending and investment (to the extent that it ever stopped), it is more crucial than ever to roll back the government’s corrupting influence from the financial and housing sectors, and to allow market discipline to rule once more.

Congressman Amash’s bill accomplishes this goal by eliminating a number of the regulations that encourage banks to make risky loans, including the Community Reinvestment Act and several of the provisions within the Dodd-Frank Act. Then, crucially, the bill draws down the major “government-sponsored entities” (GSEs) at the center of the government’s loan market manipulations – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These bankrupt GSEs would be rolled back and, after five years eliminated entirely, selling off their assets to cover their massive debts rather than relying upon taxpayer bailouts.

The bill would also close down (over five years) the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the New Deal government agency that has been wreaking untold mischief in housing prices and mortgage loan rates for almost eighty years.

Finally, H.R. 3550 takes major steps to put a stop to bank bailouts. It repeals powers that were misused to do favors for financial institutions. It shifts more of the risk of failure from taxpayers to bank owners. And it reforms bankruptcy laws so that a credible, predictable process, free from political influence and the possibility of bailouts, can be applied to even the largest financial institutions.

I urge you to contact your representative today and urge him or her to support the New Fair Deal Banking and Housing Stability Act, H.R. 3550, in order to prevent a repeat of the disastrous financial collapse of 2008.

In 2010, Congress passed, and President Obama signed into law, a massive 2,300-page banking regulatory bill called the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The premise of Dodd-Frank was to prevent another financial crisis and, as the title suggests, reform regulation of Wall Street. Like many well-intentioned laws, however, Dodd-Frank in the hands of the regulatory state has turned into a crushing burden, highlighted today in a House Small Business Committee hearing titled “Bearing the Burden: Overregulation Impact on Small Banks and Rural Communities.” Rather than ending the situation where a few massive banking institutions were “too big to fail,” Dodd-Frank has actually entrenched the big banks at the top of the heap while crushing small community banks and credit unions.

Last month's proposed rule on Incentive-Based Pay, the "London-Whale Sized Regulation," is open for comment until July 22. This proposal carries large implications for financial sector operations and also represents a overall trend in Dodd-Frank regulations.

Financial regulators released a 279-page proposal that would set parameters around how and when Wall Street Executives make their money. The proposal, mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act, is a five-year project spanning across six regulatory agencies.

Advocates of government intervention in markets usually frame the debate as a binary choice: “We need government to run things so the evil corporations don’t!” It’s an effective tactic, because most people have an inherent distrust of big business, and like the idea of a less money-grubbing alternative. Most of the time, Republicans they foolishly play into the narrative, arguing that given the choice between corporate masters or government ones, we should choose the former. Unsurprisingly, few people are convinced by this, and they shouldn’t be. The whole debate is based on a false dilemma that doesn’t exist. The discussion should not be about choosing our rulers, it should be about choosing whether to be ruled in the first place. As the 19th century individualist Lysander Spooner said, “a man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.”

President Barack Obama delivered his sixth State of the Union address to Congress last night, laying out a litany of mostly terrible policy proposals, as well as attempting to defend his economic record. There's no denying that he's a strong orator who tells a story very well, but the substance of the speech itself was more of the same stale ideas and poor leadership that Americans have seen throughout the course of his presidency. Though there are plenty of policy items worthy of analysis, here are some lines that stuck out.

Old stereotypes die hard, regardless of their increasing inability to reflect reality. Consider the caricature of the corporate fat cat, clad cartoonishly in top hat and spats, building monopolies, crushing competition, exploiting workers and all the while lining his pockets with wads and wads of filthy lucre. Now quick, how do you think our straw industrialist will vote? If you said Republican, you’re not alone.

As one of our over 6 million FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your representative and ask him or her to vote NO on the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act, H.R. 3370. This bill would delay much-needed reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program and inevitably result in a taxpayer bailout of that program.

As one of our over 6 million FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your senators and urge them to vote NO on the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act, S. 1926. Sponsored by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), this bill would delay much-needed reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program and inevitably result in a taxpayer bailout of that program.